Saturday, May 7, 2016

For the second time in his career, virulently anti-LGBT Alabama Chief Justice Roy Moore has had ethics charges filed against him via the Alabama Judicial Inquiry Commission.

This time the charges relate to orders he issued in the wake of the historic ruling by the U.S. Supreme Court on same-sex marriage. Chief Justice Moore instructed the state’s probate judges that they had a “ministerial duty” to continue enforcement of the state’s ban on same-sex marriage.

As a result of the charges, Chief Justice Moore, 69, has been immediately suspended from the bench and is facing a potential hearing before the state’s Court of the Judiciary, a panel of judges, lawyers and other appointees. Among possible outcomes at such a hearing would be his removal from office.

“We intend to fight this agenda vigorously and expect to prevail,” Chief Justice Moore said in a statement, saying that the Judicial Inquiry Commission, which filed the complaint, had no authority over the charges at issue.

Referring to a transgender activist in Alabama, Chief Justice Moore said the commission had “chosen to listen to people like Ambrosia Starling, a professed transvestite, and other gay, lesbian and bisexual individuals, as well as organizations which support their agenda.”

It is the second complaint lodged by the state’s Judicial Inquiry Commission against the judge. In 2003, he was ousted by the same body from his position as chief justice after disobeying a federal court order to remove a two-ton monument of the Ten Commandments that he had installed in the rotunda of the state judicial building.